The Beck

Anthony McGowan is a gift to all young readers. Dyslexia friendly, his latest book is printed on an off-white background using a carefully selected typeset. The story itself, then takes off like a rocket, with 13-year-old Kyle soon won over by his eccentric grandfather, once an Elvis imitator now an environmental activist. Between them they cook up a plan to save a newly restored Yorkshire local stream from a proposed industrial development that would have proved ruinous to it. This was all written before current government proposals to force through planning applications in the future regardless of how this might affect previously protected newts, bats or any other endangered natural features.  Children’s fiction has always previously taken the side of local objections to faceless planning decisions made by vested interests elsewhere, political or otherwise. It is hard to think the government’s new policy will change the minds of either this author or any others to come on such issues whatever the current chancellor Rachel Reeves might wish.

But this novella never comes over as a polemical tract. Sentences whizz by, jokey dialogue abounds and clever sub-plots inter-weave with the main action. Kyle is also well supported by Karthi, a new neighbour his age recently from Sri Lanka but already effective when it comes to seeing off local bullies. She and Kyle agree to be friends but that is all, though readers may speculate this might change to something warmer after their joint plan to save the stream finally comes off. Grandad lives just long enough to witness this triumph and also to oversee the transfer of his three-legged dog, Rude Word, to Kyle and family. Why the dog has been given this name is just one of the many delightful touches in this excellent story.